Revelation

Peace and Judgement

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 15-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 183

Dictation Name: RR129H15

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

We rejoice that the government is upon thy shoulders, that we can come to Thee in the confidence that because all power in heaven and earth are Thine, all things shall move in terms of Thy holy purpose. Give us grace therefore to stand fast in the day of trouble, and to know that Thou art our shield and our exceeding great reward; that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. So that we may boldly say: “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me.” Our God we praise Thee. In Jesus name amen.

Our scripture is the 10th chapter of Revelation. Peace and Judgement. Revelation 10, Peace and Judgement.

“10 And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:

2 And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

3 And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

4 And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

5 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

8 And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.

9 And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.

10 And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

11 And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”

Jesus Christ in His ascension declared to His disciples: “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.” The word power which Christ used means not only all power, ultimate and absolute power over all things, but also all authority. Christ therefore is king and Lord over heaven and earth, absolute ruler; and He is also the ultimate authority. He governs all things. But all things do not recognize His authority, and so as king of kings and Lord of Lords and as the great executor of the estate, He must not only dispossess the false heir, the enemy, but also establish His authority over them openly, confounding them in their rebellion, and revealing to all men His sovereign power.

Jesus Christ appeared in the Old Testament repeatedly as the Angel of the present. And He appeared as Gods tabernacling glory as the pillar and the cloud in the wilderness journey. In this chapter He appears only partially veiled by the cloud and the fire, whereas in the wilderness His flock was a little people, now by virtue of the world wide extent of the church, Christ covers land and sea and overshadows the entire world. A rainbow was upon His head, and his face was as it were the sun, and His feet as pillars of fire.

The rainbow stands for Gods covenant of peace made with Noah. And Christ as the prince of peace and the principle of peace is at one and the same time the principle with reference to the infraction of peace of judgement. Jesus Christ because He is the prince of peace is also the Lord of judgement, the two are inseparable. When Rome established Pax Romana, the Roman peace, it established it in terms of Roman law and Roman force, Roman power, Roman judgement. Peace cannot be established unless an order, a judgement is established. And those who claim in the name of peace to be against war and against law and order, against judgement; are actually against peace also. They are trying to create revolutionary warfare and revolutionary anarchy. There can be no peace apart from judgement and the exercise of power in judgement.

For this reason, the last judgement, total judgement, must proceed the total peace that comes with the new creation. In order to eliminate judgement, man must of necessity eliminate peace. Judgement is the maintenance of order, and to eliminate judgement it is necessary to eliminate every form of order.

As a result, when men religiously, socially and juridically, legally, wage war against the doctrines of hell and of judgement they do not attain the so-called peace they long for, but that very decent into hell they seek to avoid. Because hell is the absence of peace and judgement it is the negation of law and order, and hell appears whenever and wherever men destroy Gods peace and Gods judgement.

Christ appears in this vision to John, to the church in the person of John. But His message is to the entire world. He declares His title to the entire world by planting on fiery foot on the sea and another on the land. All power, all authority in heaven and earth is claimed by him. He proclaims the fullness of judgement, the seven thunders. And at this John rejoices, and he makes haste to record this, because as one of the persecuted saints of the world he is eager for the end and the full deliverance of the saints. But he is restrained in his hast. “Write them not.”

John, like so many saints, is impatient at Gods time. He longs to see the enemy confounded and destroyed. And so he is told that there should be time no longer, but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as He hath declared to His servants the prophets.

The most literal reading of this term: “There should be time no longer” Is that there should be ‘delay no longer’. No more time wasted. God has begun through Jesus Christ His judgement. And Saint Paul declared: “Now the things which are, are being shaken; so that the things which cannot be shaken might alone remain.” And so with the fall of Jerusalem began the second great shaking of the nations which shall culminate in Christ’s victory, and ultimately in this last judgement.

There shall be no more delay. Man sees God as delaying, but God assures man that the time of delay is past in the Christian dispensation. John is then given a little book, and he is asked to eat it. The little book is not an unusual prophetic symbol. It stands for mastering Gods requirements of us, of digesting the meaning of His word, of making His purpose so much a part of our lives that it becomes like food assimilated, and becomes our life. And so the command is: “Take and eat.” And at first blush the calling of the evangelist John seems to be a glorious and happy one. It is sweet in his mouth. He is the beloved disciple, he is the one who is closest to Christ. Through him the Holy Ghost gives to the world one of the gospels, and three epistles. And now through John is given the revelation of Jesus Christ, but this is not all.

“It shall make Thy belly bitter.” The calling of God involves not only the sweet but the bitter also, persecution and sorrow. And only those who make Gods will part and parcel of their lives can know either the bitterness or the sweetness of obedience. Both are there, and the church in the person of John is permitted no illusion concerning its calling. The inheritance is being restored. The promised land is being reclaimed for the saints; but not without its wilderness journey for the saints. And only when John and the church accepts both the bitterness and the sweetness of this calling can there be truly a commissioning with power. “Thou must prophecy again before many peoples and nations, and tongues and kings.

And so this chapter raises a question for all of us, because John stands here in our stead, in place of the church. If there is no bitterness, are we really in touch with the word of God? If that which we stand for is not disturbing to the world and sometimes to ourselves and if it does not involve sacrifices, should we not wonder whether we have ever really eaten Gods word? If it does not make us a disturbing influence in this world and in the midst of churches which compromise with the world, so that we are either unwelcome there, or feel that we must separate themselves from them in terms of the word can we say we have heard it, tasted it, and eaten it.

When the church of Jesus Christ sits, as it does so often today, easy in its surroundings and successful in the face of the world, is it not because it is no longer the church of Jesus Christ? And when Christians can live comfortably in the world and in the churches which are a part of this world, is it not because they are not true the word of God, and have never really heard it?

And so the tenth chapter of Revelation is a challenge to the church, and to the believer. “Take and eat. And it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in Thy mouth sweet as honey.” In the midst of warfare, in the midst of a battle to dispossess the enemy from the world and from the church, can the believer expect to do battle without suffering, without bitterness, and without some cost?

And yet the assurance to the church is this: “All power is given unto me, in heaven and in earth.” Go ye therefore. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us, blessed us, and prospered us in Jesus Christ. That Thou hast given us strength to make our stand and our witness, and has prospered us therein. We thank Thee our Father that underneath all the experiences of life are Thine everlasting arms. And so our God, we cast our every care upon Thee, knowing Thou carest for us. Our God we praise Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

We have a question, first of all, from last week that I would like to read and then deal with because I do believe that it is related to our present lesson. “It has been said that Christ morality and situation ethics can be reconciled and indeed used together because of their common basis, love. This idea seems to be faulty, what would be your reaction to such a statement? Specifically the comparison of Biblical and existential love.”

The only relationship between the Biblical and the Existential doctrines of love is that they are spelled the same way, they are the same word; but they are two radically different concepts. The existential concept of love is the total toleration of all evil. The existential doctrine of love is waging war against the Biblical concept of God, and of love, and of separation. It wants total equalization, total integration of good and evil, which means the absolute surrender of good.

Therefore it is impossible to reconcile Christian morality and situation ethics. They do not have a common basis. The Biblical doctrine of love as we have seen more than once, is that love is the fulfilling of the law. Our love to God means keeping the first table of the law. Our love to our neighbor means keeping the second table of the law, respecting his right to life, thou shalt not kill; his right to the sanctity of his home, thou shalt not commit adultery; the right to his property, thou shalt not steal; the right to his reputation, thou shalt not bear false witness; and these things in thought as well as in word and deed, thou shalt not covet. Love is the fulfilling of the law.

Now, existential love is the denial of law, and it is the violation of law. There can therefore be no reconciliation between the two.

Now just as we saw today, Christ is at one and the same time portrayed as the principle of peace, the rainbow, Gods covenant of peace, and the totality of judgement the seven thunders; the two being inseparable he is therefore irreconcilable with existentialist love which denies any concept of judgement. The peace it wants is the peace of total toleration, which means the death of God. And this is why existentialist love begins by proclaiming the death of the Biblical God. Then it proclaims the death of the Biblical law and morality.

Its terms of peace therefore, are death. The only way you can reconcile yourself as a Christian with situation ethics is the way you reconcile yourself with a lion by allowing him to eat you. There is no other reconciliation. War has to be waged against existentialism and situation ethics, total warfare. And anyone who makes any concession to situation ethics, as so many so-called evangelicals are doing, is denying Christ and is an apostate.

Are there any other questions now, first of all with respect to our chapter? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Alright, but we will hold that for… yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Unfortunately what they too often think of as love is really a messianic complex which makes you believe that your feelings are capable of saving people.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is a form of environmentalism, with a vengeance. You are going to be God. If you pour out enough love and feeling upon people you are going to change them, in other words, you have the saving power. You can provide a saving environment.

Now, what is needed by such children is basically a Godly discipline. And wonders have been done with retarded children and disturbed children by providing that kind of discipline. And one of the reasons we do have so many who are disturbed today is because there is no point, no direction in their lives. And there is no point and no direction because there is no discipline.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] They are not accomplishing anything in the various institutions because they are operating on totally false premises. As they apply the same principles that are operating in our hospitals and mental institutions in the schools, because it is basically one philosophy, we are producing more and more disturbed children. Because we are denying them precisely that in terms of which they can grow.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I think it is a little too easy an answer, I think it is more complicated than that. Yes?

[Audience Member]There is a statement that has been made all the time that ‘God is love’, is this the orthodox, not an existential idea?

[Rushdoony] Yes, John makes the statement in his epistle: “God is love.” This is first of all a Biblical statement. But this is in terms of the Biblical doctrine of love, and the word there Agape essentially means grace. So it is a very different concept than a humanistic love. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes except in Ezekiel’s case it is the reverse; He is given an unpleasant task to do and it is to be bitter work, but he is told it will be made sweetness unto him, because the bitter that we assume in Christ’s name will become sweetness.

Yes, let’s have your question now, apparently we don’t have to many others.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the trouble of course is when people take a single verse and absolutize it out of its context. For example, one of the statements that is often quoted is that Christians should not judge because Christ said: “Judge not lest ye be judged.” And so on. But our Lord also said: “Judge righteous judgement.” So you see, you cannot say He forbade judgement. What he forbade was judgement on purely personal grounds.

Now, “Resist not evil.” This of course is from the Sermon on the Mount, the fifth chapter of Matthew, verses 39 following. And this very clearly, in its context tells us that when we are in a situation of compulsion: “If any man compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” and so on. In other words, the Greek text here makes very clear that, the Christian is not to be a revolutionist. He is not to resist evil when evil is in the ascendency by any foolish physical acts of violence. Go along with it, be obedient. If any man compel thee to go a mile, draft you to go a mile, go with him twain. Be cooperative. Because you see, the Roman government had the right to take any person, a non-citizen, a Jew, and tell him: “We are drafting you right now to work for us, to be say, a carrier for a mile, or do such and such work for a mile.” Roadwork. They were compelled to do it. Be cooperative, because they have the power, and if you are uncooperative you can get into trouble. Be realistic, in other words.

So, ‘resist not evil’ is used here in this sense. It is not that we are to be pacifists, because pacifism is alien to the Bible. So that to absolutize this is to make it a pacifist statement, but you have to take it in terms of its context.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very interesting statement…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No it doesn’t. Because, first of all what they are saying is: “Bad meat drives out good meat.” Now, they are quoting a statement from classical economics, Gresham’s law: “Bad money drives out good money.” Now, how do you get bad money? You get it as a result of interference by the central government, so that it manufactures counterfeit money and issues it with full authority of the law, and insists that it is equal to good money. So what happens? Good money goes into hiding. Now, Gresham’s law is operative in other realms too. If you have standards which permits bad meat to compete with good meat on an equal basis because the law is governing the situation to the point that they both go out as it were under similar standards, the bad meat will drive out the good meat. Bad milk will drive out good milk. Why? You have a price control on the milk, as long as it meets the government standards for pasteurization and so on (which certainly aren’t productive of good milk) why bother, because you cannot make more money on the good milk than you can on the bad milk, which can get by. So you see, it is the controls in the situation which make this possible. It is the attempt by man to say: “We will establish a law, and our law is going to govern over God’s law.”

Now of course we are seeing this, to go into the monetary situation, right now. And we have been denying economic law for some time, we have been Keynesian and neo-Keynesian in our economics, and what is happening? Well, there is a gold panic in Europe, and 35-40% by the admission of the press is with American money. Americans, in other words, are buying the gold. So we cannot blame De Gaulle. Of course this is the height of ridiculousness, blaming De Gaulle. To blame De Gaulle for our present crisis is comparable to saying, if one of us should go home, get drunk and start a fire which would burn down the house, and then say: “It is my mother in-laws fault, she hates me.” Now, it is possible that the mother in law may hate the person, item one can be true. De Gaulle doesn’t like the United States. True. But to blame him for something we have done to ourselves, you see, is the height of childishness. What have we done? We have not believed that there is a law that governs economics. This is the fundamental principle of our operation. And what does this belief rest on? The idea that there is no God. No absolutes, so that, we can operate in defiance of law in any area, so we are applying it in economics.

Now, because we don’t believe in law, it has to be someone’s fault, you see. And that is why we are blaming De Gaulle, and we are talking such absurdity that it is staggering. For example, the statement was issued by the Treasury Friday that if foreign buyers didn’t stop buying gold, we would bankrupt them by reducing the price of gold to six dollars an ounce, from $35. Well, this is like saying that if there is a rush on buying Cadillac’s that we are going to reduce them to $500 to discourage buyers. It is insanity. And the only reaction to that in Europe can be: “They are finished, we had better get what we can out of this situation because they have taken leave of their senses.”

So, we are creating a crisis there, monetarily, because we deny God and therefore we deny law. And it’s the same thing in relation to meats and the inspection of meat. We are not suffering there because of freedom, but because of controls; the attempt by man to be the law giver.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I didn’t hear the last part of it?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, gold does not draw any interest of course, when it is withdrawn and hoarded. So the reason people are withdrawing it is because they recognize paper money is going out of style, which is exactly what it is doing. And when people recognize that paper money is going to go down the drain, they rush to gold. What has happened in England? Well, they have had a devaluation, and it is a small one. It is going to be the first of the series. And of course we have ourselves to blame for a great deal there. Three years ago Britain should have devalued, and devalued more than 14%, which is all they devalued last week. Now, we persuaded them to stand fast. So, they had to institute austerity, controls. After three years of controls this failed. At the last minute we still continued to save them, and we poured some analysts the last few days, a Billion dollars in gold into trying to save the count, so we may have a lot less than 12 billion left, and it still went down the drain, and it is going to have to be devalued again and again, and again.

Now, we are saying we are not going to devalue, in other words we are not going to pay the price of our folly, our inflation. What will be the alternative if we persist in this? Controls. We will have our austerity. The first control that has already been suggested is on foreign investments. Of course, in the process we are blaming as I said earlier, De Gaulle. But what is happening, why is this gold panic underway? Well, supposing you were doing business if France, sending goods there, and you suddenly realized that the French Frank was going to be devalued, so that you might get back 50 cents on the dollar… you would liquidate at once, wouldn’t you? And you would also refuse to do business unless you could take out your money once you had sold your goods.

Now what have we done to the world? For the past generation we have told everyone that has sold us goods, say the French business man, the German business man, the Japanese, the Australian, all of them: “Don’t take your money. Just hold onto your paper dollars. It is as good as gold, of course you want to convert it into gold or into your own French Franks and German Marks, and English Pounds and so on, but please don’t. We will give you the freedom to do it any time you want in the future, but now we would prefer it if you didn’t. And we guarantee you, when you want it, you can have it.

Well, what has happened? The governments have had to absorb these dollars that the people have gained. Supposing a French business man has sold something in this country, or he has sold (citro?) and cars here. And we have told him not to take his dollars, and we have pushed the French government into taking those dollars, and we have pushed the German government into taking the marks that a business man makes here, and the English the dollars and so on, instead of converting. So these various governments have gotten overloaded with dollars. By our own admission there are probably 28 billion dollars in claims outstanding in claims against our gold. And we have talked them into refusing to convert.

Well, now can you blame any of them now for getting panicky? When Johnson himself has admitted that we may have a deficit of 35 Billion dollars, it means that the dollar is going down the drain, we are becoming bankrupt, so they want to get their money out. And this drain is by private individuals who have done business with us. They want their money, and they are tire of waiting and they are demanding it.

Nobody in the world has done us 100th the damage that Washington itself has done by its fiscal policies, and it has begun with the fact that we have denied God, therefore we have denied law in every area, therefore there is no economic law that governs nations, there is no political law that God has established that governs nations, there is no law. We are our own law makers. So what have we said? “Well, gold is virtually obsolete, so what harm is there?” and so we are facing disaster because of our unbelief. This is the root cause, it is religious.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right, it draws interest in this sense, for example, a double eagle two years ago was $47 at this time two years ago, about thanksgiving and Christmas. This week in most places it hit $65 to $75 dollars. Now that is a sizeable increase, you see. So that the profit if you sold it now would be immense, and when you realize that some wholesalers are talking about a price of 3-400 dollars in a couple years, you realize the potential.

Or, take silver dollars. They don’t draw interest either, except as Mr. Stafford indicated, negatively. But, if a person had last year at the beginning of the year of 66 bought a bag of silver dollars for $1250, a thousand dollars worth face value, today he could sell it for well over a thousand dollars profit. Now, it has drawn more than interest, you see it is real money, so its value will appreciate the more paper money because of inflation depreciates in value.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, well that’s what makes it real money, it is wealth. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, inflation is a form of devaluation.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is why you see, this other devaluation is being forced on us. The paper dollar is so far out of line in relationship to the real dollar, the gold and silver dollar. And so there has to be a readjustment, and we are afraid to make it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Their road is disaster, as Christ said speaking through Solomon long ago: “All they who hate me love death.” And so their course is death. This is the end result of ungodly economics. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The ungodly cannot see it, and this is true of even the ungodly who are conservative and libertarian economists. One of the finest things ever written on inflation about 18-20 years ago is perhaps as good a description of what is happening today as anything you could read, and yet the man who wrote it hasn’t taken the slightest step to protect himself from the consequences of inflation. The reason is, because he does not have faith he believes that somehow man, he is basically a humanist, can pull a rabbit out of a hat, work a trick, stop the whole thing. And so he has described exactly what is ahead of us, but he doesn’t believe it is going to happen. And I could cite several economists of whom this is true, libertarian economists. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very true. God, Gold, and Government by Doctor Howard Kershner is an excellent little book to read to understand the relationship between economics and morality, and how all these things hinge on a faith in God.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, an individual Christian first of all should be taking steps by saving all silver coins that he sees. They are going to disappear very soon, his life may depend on having them. And there are a number of other steps he can take to realize what is coming, to realize that we are faced progressively with social chaos and anarchy, and economic disaster.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, “Lay not up for yourself treasures.” In other words, some use this to militate against any kind of preparation. I have had that quoted by people who had twice as much as I ever hope to have, and I always thought it was a little bit insolent on their part to do so. What they mean by that basically is, “Don’t do anything about the future that is going to shake my confidence in what is coming, because I believe I am going to be raptured out of everything, so don’t disturb me.”

Now, what our Lord meant was that our faith, our hope should not be in material things. Where your heart is, there is your treasure also. [Accidently says the quote backwards I think] And it is absurd to misuse scripture.

Now there is one verse that some years ago used to be used quite heavily in Northern California in several churches, Peters statement that women should avoid adorning themselves with gold and precious jewels, and plaiting of hair and apparel, and so on. Now there have actually been and are groups that use that to say that plaited hair is unchristian, and jewelry is unchristian, and so on. Well, if they are going to apply the text in that way there is only one thing for them to do, to become nudists. Because Peter lists also apparel, or clothing. And a careful reading of that text is that these things are not to be their confidence, their source of hope; but that it is to be a meek and quiet spirit before the Lord. So that Peter is not saying that it is ungodly to have plaited hair or to have gold jewelry or any kind of jewelry, but that women should not put their confidence in these things, their real adornment is a Godly Spirit.

This is the passage, 1st Peter 3 “3 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation” (used hear in the old fashioned sense of total behavior) “of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

So you see, the plain meaning of that verse. But this is the same with treasures. God Himself makes it clear that He blesses people very often materially. And there is nothing wrong with material goods. It is a blessing of God, but it cannot be where our heart is because then we can be destroyed. Because thieves can steal it, moths and rust consume it, fire can destroy it. And then our lives are destroyed. But if our lives are grounded in Christ, in His saving power, then our treasures are incorruptible ones. And so with adornment; our true adornment is a meek and quiet spirit. But this does not forbid apparel, clothing; attractive hair dress, or the wearing of gold or other jewelry. By no means.

Well, our time is up and we stand adjourned.